do you dream often, they asked, their faces the shape of dehydrated tortoises

Goya, Disparate número dos

They came up and they asked, do you dream often? And I said, of course I don't, even if I was precisely asleep at that moment. They shook their heads, and started walking away, dismissing me completely, dismissing me like a three-legged cat is dismissed on a black sabbath. What could I have done, if not just run after them, call out their names, which I didn't know yet, and yell, cry, plea for them to give me one more opportunity. I wouldn't lie this time around, I sniffled apologetically, but they wouldn't give me the time of day, the time of night, they wouldn't give me time, period, and that's what I needed, because I could hear the alarm clock's bray on the other side of the placenta, and I was suddenly certain, positive, genuinely and indisputably confident, like you can only be in the subjunctive of dreams, that what they had to say carried a truth, no, the truth of that singular instant. When they finally stopped, and turned around, with faces the shape of dehydrated tortoises, they uttered--in a language so mine that it escaped me completely--a whisper (can a whisper be uttered?), and I realized that that was it, that that was all there was, stepped back, let myself fall, fall on my ass, fall on my body, fall awake: calm, so calm, so placid and serene. My bed was so soft. The fan was going about its rounds. The upstairs neighbor was stomping her feet.

A song. What was that song?